by Evan Winter
In the first moments of the fight’s aftermath, Tau’s feat felt threatening and Jayyed had wanted to dismiss or deny the accomplishment, but denying a thing just because he’d rather it not be true would make him no better than the Royal Nobles of the Guardian Council. So, he chose to do the opposite. He chose to see Tau as a beacon of hope.
Jayyed had gone to the other umqondisi. He’d argued for Tau. He’d burned important favors to have the match declared a tie, to get Tau into the isikolo. And, when it was all done, wondering if he was playing himself for a fool, Jayyed went to see the boy.
He’d spoken with him, sensing the young man’s doubts. They echoed his own. Hiding those reservations, Jayyed had chosen to be encouraging. He wanted Tau, the boy who had achieved the impossible because he could not see how impossible it was, to continue to believe in himself, to know that Jayyed believed in him.
He wanted to see if Tau could continue to defy the odds, because if what Jayyed had learned was true, the Chosen needed to see that almost as much as they needed a better breed of fighter. They needed to believe that odds could be defied.
He’d given Tau a chance and, bolstered by superior training, but more through inhuman effort, the boy had become the thing Jayyed had both hoped and feared to create. Like dragons, like Gifted, like Ingonyama, Tau, a Lesser, had become a living weapon.
“You stubborn intulo!” Jayyed railed at him as they rushed for the city gates, fleeing like criminals. “Think! Think for a breath. Kellan didn’t even remember you from the day of your father’s death. You were nothing more than a crazed Lesser and he still didn’t want you to die. Can’t you see? He’s not the bloodthirsty villain you’d like him to be. If he were, he would have killed you long before I arrived.”
Tau said nothing.
“Yes,” Jayyed said, hammering the point home. “You’re not too stupid to see that.” Jayyed aimed for a nerve. “I’ve watched Kellan Okar fight for the last two cycles. Almost without doubt, he’ll win a guardian sword when he graduates. He will, without doubt, become an Ingonyama. He’s the best Indlovu the citadel has seen in twenty or thirty cycles!”
Tau turned his scarred face away. “You told us training would outdo talent,” the boy said. “You worked us half to death with promises that we could be like them.”
“What?” Jayyed countered. “You think Kellan Okar doesn’t train? You think he wakes at midday, gorges himself, poles Noble women in the ass, and then, when occasion merits, happens to fight like that?”
Themba, marching behind them, spluttered, trying to hold back a laugh.
“Move off!” Jayyed hollered.
Themba ducked his head, the chastisement chasing him and the other men away.
“I do nothing but train,” said Tau. “I give my life to the sword. That’s what you asked. It’s what I’ve done. You told me I would be their equal. You told me—”
“Tau,” Jayyed said, afraid to admit what he must. “Kellan is… There aren’t enough spans in the day for you to out-train that one. He’s a Greater Noble, but for much of his life, the other Nobles treated him like a pariah. He lives his life in defiance of that, as if to prove that he is more than ‘the coward Okar’s’ son. He’s in the citadel practice yards for as long as you are in ours. You have to understand, he lives his life as a rebuke to his father’s legacy. That, coupled with the fact that he’s…” Jayyed trailed off.
“Bigger, stronger, faster,” Tau said, finishing Jayyed’s unspoken thought. “He’s Noble and that makes him too much to overcome.”
Jayyed hesitated. Sometimes too much hope leads men to bad ends. “He’s too much to overcome,” he conceded.
“That’s it, then? I’m a Lesser and the best I can do, after giving my life to the sword, is to match their weak?”
“They think we can’t even do that,” Jayyed told him. “And, if you want the truth, I wasn’t sure we could either.”
“How can you tell me that, when you led a scale of Lessers to the Queen’s Melee, to fight against the Nobles’ best? How can you tell me there are heights to which I cannot climb, when you were the one who forged the paths?”
“I am not like you,” Jayyed said, the words frightening him as he spoke them.
“You work harder than I do? Smarter?”
There was no one close enough to hear their conversation, and Tau needed to know some of the truth. Telling him was the right thing to do, but it didn’t make the words easier. “My father was a Greater Noble,” he said.
Tau jerked as if he’d been whipped. “What?”
“Before I was born, my village was attacked in a raid. The Indlovu came but the hedeni had already razed most of it. They were retreating and my mother’s parents were murdered. They were among the last to die and my mother was next. Three savages came for her. A Greater Noble got there first. He killed them. He saved her. He felt he was owed. My mother was not yet a woman. He thought it safe to use her.”
Tau shook his head as if the words made no sense. “No… Lesser-Noble crosses are not permitted.… The babies are stillborn.”
“Not all,” Jayyed said. “When my mother learned she was pregnant, she told the other villagers that she’d lain with one of the Lessers who died in the raid. I was born later that cycle, alive.”
Tau didn’t say a word. He was staring at Jayyed and taking quick, shallow breaths.
“I’ve spent my life fighting and killing, doing all in my power to help my people survive,” Jayyed said. He paused then, unready to tell Tau everything and deciding to explain only as much as he needed to know. “A few cycles ago, I found something that could help. I’d learned how to spot many of the characteristics of a Lesser-Noble cross.”
“What? Why?”
“Because we’re losing the war,” Jayyed said. “We’ll never match the hedeni’s numbers, and the only way we avoid annihilation is with Gifted and better fighters. But we have too few Gifted and too few Nobles. Our Lessers are better trained than the hedeni, but the difference between a well-trained Lesser and a hedeni warrior is too slight. We’re losing.”
“We’re losing? Who knows this?” Tau asked.
“Not many, and some who should know refuse to believe.”
“But you believe it? So why send us to fight and die in a war we can’t win?”
“Because I think I’ve found a way to stave off our end,” Jayyed said, thinking carefully about how to word the next part. He wasn’t ready to invoke the queen’s name or reveal the endgame, and he didn’t think Tau was ready for that either. “I have to hope that, if we can last several cycles more, we can find a way to finish this war, without our people being wiped out.”
“Scale Jayyed? Are we to play a part in seeing that hope realized?”
“The rest of them are,” Jayyed said. “You were never part of the plan.”
“My sword brothers… they’re of Lesser-Noble blood?”
“They are,” he said. “Once I learned that cross-caste children survive in much larger numbers than we’re led to believe, I realized that, in them, there’s a chance.” The unburdening was cathartic. Jayyed had held this for too long. “I filled my scale with as many crosses as I could find. If I was going to challenge our ideas and laws on crossing the castes, I needed to prove that the offspring of these unions make better fighters than the standard Lesser.”
He knew he should ease Tau into this, but he also wanted him to understand. “I need proof that we can create a new and necessary caste, between Nobles and Lessers. The Guardian Council won’t heed my warnings about the war, but maybe they’ll take my help. If they see the strength and possibilities of cross-caste warriors, the council might allow us to find and train them separately. If we can do this in the open, future generations will be stronger with this new caste. This is my goal, and in pursuing it, I found you, a pure-blood Lesser with a Noble’s determination.”
He offered Tau a small smile. “You gave me more hope. You see, maybe we can help more Lessers reach the limit of their p
otential. Those Lessers, alongside Nobles, Gifted, and cross-castes, can help us hold the peninsula until, one day, this war ends.”
Tau was not looking at Jayyed when he spoke. “You want to create a new caste, something between Lessers and Nobles? You’ll make a new training school for them, something between the isikolo and citadel?”
Tau was too quiet, but at least he understood. “Yes,” Jayyed said. “That’s right.”
Tau looked at him then. “Hadith, Yaw, Chinedu, Themba, Uduak, they’re cross-castes?”
Jayyed nodded. “Yes. And, when all this began, I was so very certain Uduak would be my greatest find, but it seems I’ve discovered something more.” He willed his words to do more than be heard. Jayyed wanted his aspirations understood.
“I’ll tell no one,” Tau said, and Jayyed knew the boy was not convinced.
They walked in silence, the weight of the confession heavy between them, until, as they marched out of the city’s gates, Tau spoke, his tone sharp. “You raised me up with bold words and ideals that you don’t believe. You don’t think Lessers can be great. All you think is that those of us who share Noble blood can be more.”
“You say that, yet I took you into my scale.”
“Tell me why,” Tau said.
“I wanted my men to see that with enough determination our natural limits can be pushed.”
“I think you wanted to shame them into working hard enough to never lose to someone like me.”
“What you’re calling shame I think of as pride. I wanted them to share the determination and pride that you have in yourself. Granted, I had no idea you’d become good enough to match a few Nobles. That’s not something I thought possible.”
“You’re content to be less than,” Tau said.
Jayyed shook off the comment. “I’m telling you that you can be proud and that your achievements prove that all Lessers can do more.” Jayyed smiled. “We all have our place, but perhaps the gap between Noble and Lesser is not as wide as most think. Perhaps—”
“No. After all you’ve done and all you’ve seen, you still believe they’re better than us. You still think blood determines destiny.”
“You want to know what I think?” Jayyed asked, his frustration slipping free. “I think that, especially after today, a Lesser should know better than to believe he can match a Greater Noble.”
Tau reeled as if slapped, then rounded on Jayyed. “They tell me that we’re winning the war. It’s not true. They tell me that the offspring of Nobles and Lessers die in childbirth. It’s not true. They tell me that we are Lessers, but I’m starting to think that’s also not true.”
“You won’t help your people if you don’t know your place.”
“I don’t think I like the place they’ve set for me.”
“It’s based on what you are.”
“They don’t know what I am,” Tau said, “but I can show you.”
Jayyed knew what was coming and he stopped marching. He faced Tau, looking down at him, letting the boy have his moment.
“Fight me, tomorrow,” Tau said. “Come to the practice yards before dawn.”
And, like that, the time for words and soft persuasion was over. Jayyed failed Tau that night, but he would try to help the boy see the truth, because, if he did, Tau could light the path to greatness for other Lessers. He just needed to be put in his place.
“I’ll meet you, Tau Solarin,” Jayyed said, “and, together, we’ll see what you are.”
PYRRHIC
Tau was drilling in the practice yards when Jayyed found him the next day. The sun had yet to rise.
There were bags under the older man’s eyes. “Morning, Tau. Care to spar?”
There was no heat in Jayyed’s voice. He could have been asking about the weather. Tau paced, letting his muscles loosen. He nodded at his umqondisi.
Jayyed stripped off his tunic and stretched, his body a mass of scars and corded muscle. He picked up his sword and shield and stood, ready. Jayyed was the taller, stronger, and more experienced man. Even the blood in his veins claimed superiority.
Tau put down his swords and pulled his tunic free. Retrieving his weapons, he twirled them through the warm air. Without a word, Jayyed attacked.
In the beginning they flowed with each other, letting their swords dance. Then flow gave way to force and, with dulled swords that could not manage the task, they fought as if to kill. Circling, attacking, defending only when they must, they pushed each other, both men seeking to send the other past the limits of his prowess.
Tau fought with the fervor of a zealot. He would prove he was more than Jayyed believed his birth allowed, and to do it he would maintain the pace until he won or his heart burst. It was what made him the fighter he was.
His edge didn’t come from his body or blood. It didn’t come from gifts. It was that he desired mastery more than he desired breath. It was that he wanted revenge more than he wanted to live. It was that his father’s life had mattered every bit as much as the lives of Nobles, and though they didn’t believe that yet, they would.
Already Jayyed was flagging and had taken to pushing off and away from Tau, using the gaps in battle to catch his breath. Then he began using the gaps to waste it.
“We are a people besieged,” he told Tau, his voice thin with the strain of speaking and defending. “We have all lost something, someone.”
Jayyed threw a feint at Tau’s face. Tau slapped it away and sent his umqondisi stumbling back.
“My mother lost her parents to a raid and I lost my wife to one,” Jayyed said.
Tau was not interested in Jayyed’s losses and fired his blades at the man’s shield and sword.
“My daughter lost her mother and never forgave me for not being there. I was in the Wrist, fighting. She hated me for that. For protecting others and not being there to protect them.”
Soft stories, Tau thought, clenching his jaw and switching from sword form to form, mutating and enhancing each as he went. He darted in, Jayyed reached up to block, and Tau’s weak-side blade cracked him in the ribs.
“Ack!” Jayyed wheezed, pain evident on his face as he backed away and continued to prattle. “My daughter is Gifted. I found out from my neighbor. Jamilah was already gone when I returned. Our hut empty. No goodbye.”
Tau hit him again, forcing out another cry of pain.
“She excelled at the Gifted Citadel.” Jayyed was retreating, unable to string together a consistent defense. “She fights now. Calls down dragons on hedeni. Relishes—Ah! Cek!” Tau had taken him in the thigh with the edge of a blade. “She… she relishes her role in their deaths.”
Tau saw a killing blow and took it. Jayyed blocked and Tau sent in another kill strike, this time with his strong side. Jayyed darted left, moving away from Tau’s swing, swaying with weariness. Tau, tasting blood from his overworked lungs, dashed forward, reengaging.
“Horrible,” Jayyed said. “To think her… like that. Anger, hate… burning her alive.”
Tau stabbed out, hitting Jayyed in the shield arm.
Jayyed yelped, grimaced, but kept talking. “This war… it’s made monsters of us. I don’t want to die a monster. I don’t want it for Jamilah… I don’t want our people exterminated and remembered that way.”
Tau growled, swords whirling for Jayyed’s head.
Jayyed blocked one sword, ducked the other, and ran backward in an unsteady lurch.
“Can’t keep going this way,” Jayyed said. “Guardian Council is too blind to see that. I tried to show them.… I analyzed attacks, numbers, tribes… each raid. Know what I found?” Jayyed punctuated the question with a thrust of his shield, meant to smash Tau in the face.
Tau jumped back, braced himself, and slammed the points of both swords into the shield’s center. Jayyed grunted. He’d have a bruise from that.
“More hedeni than we thought,” he said, “beyond peninsula. Far more.”
Tau attacked, working in a pattern that would require his opponent to raise his
shield. When he did, Tau would deliver a killing blow. Jayyed would not last another three crosses. He was already dead.
“We can’t beat them!” Jayyed raised his shield and Tau smashed its underside, sending it higher, exposing the umqondisi’s core.
Jayyed didn’t even try to block, and Tau stabbed the point of his weapon into his chest. If they had been fighting with sharpened blades Jayyed would have been skewered. Tau’s sword would have pierced his chest, his heart, and come out his back like… like Aren.
It was over, but all Tau felt was pain. He looked down. The point of Jayyed’s sword was dug deep into his side, drawing blood. Had they fought with sharpened blades, Jayyed would have gutted him.
“Can’t win.” Jayyed coughed. “Not as we are. Cross-caste fighters, if we can even find and train enough of them, only prolong the inevitable.… There’s only one way we survive… just one.… Peace.”
Tau dropped his blades and batted Jayyed’s sword away from his side. “This is your answer? After all your talk of great Lessers, cross-castes warriors, and Nobles, you stand in front of me begging for peace?”
Jayyed went to his knees, holding himself up on shaking arms. “Our real war is with the Cull.” Jayyed retched, nothing coming up. “But the Royal Nobles and old queens have forgotten that. We have a new queen now and it’s time for new leaders who remember what actually matters.”
Tau was furious. Jayyed had turned his victory into a draw and it burned. “You think the child queen, the same one who did nothing when you were thrown off the Guardian Council, will get rid of the current crop of Royal Nobles? You think she’ll do this so she can surrender us to the hedeni, because our real fight is with fairy-tale monsters?”
Tau turned his back on Jayyed and spat in the dirt. “I am one man, mourning one man, and will never have peace as long as the Nobles who murdered my father are alive. How can the Omehi or hedeni do what I cannot, when our history holds almost two hundred cycles of killing? You ask too much and I see why the Royals got rid of you!”
“The Royal Nobles of the Guardian Council can’t see anything but war and the lives they’ve built for themselves from it. The queen is different and strong in her faith. The Goddess did not send us here to die on the bone spears and axes of people who are not our true enemy.”